This one baffles even us: President Obama today will grant the Presiden tial Medal of Freedom to a key critic of the United States and Israel and protector of regimes like Saddam Hussein’s.

That’s right: Among the 16 medal winners is Mary Robinson, who ran the UN’s Human Rights Commission from ’97 to ’02 and built a notable anti-West, anti-US and anti-Israel legacy.

In knocking NATO’s Yugoslavia mission in the ’90s, slapping America for its criminal-justice practices and opposing sanctions against Hussein, she drew much US ire. Indeed, so hostile was she to US interests that Washington actively sought to oust her.

Her one-sided hits on Israel won special notice. The late Rep. Tom Lantos (a Democrat, human-rights advocate and Holocaust survivor) called the UN’s ’01 Durban parley, which she organized, “the most sickening . . . display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.”

Obama aide Robert Gibbs defends the award, calling her a “crusader of women’s rights.” Which, uh, misses the point, no?

Judging by Obama’s recent global “apology tour,” his view of America is pretty clear. But this award goes too far.